The more I paint, the more I realize how much my rural upbringing influences my work. It taught me to slow down, pay attention, listen, take in my environment and record every morsel on paper. Realism for me, is a way to get closer to my subject. By working in great detail I have an opportunity to re-visit a subject, time or place and re-live an experience.
A rusted tractor in its rich palette of Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna and splattering of Prussian Blue... A barn door etched with decades of wood beetle tracks, pierced with horsehair and splashed in Chinese White are to me, the perfect subjects to paint.
Even now, ( as a suburbanite! ) it is those years spent observing, tracing those beetle tracks with my paintbrush that persuade me to keep drawing and painting. I am always trying to recreate those perfect moments when we stumble across someone else’s history and simultaneously create our own.
